Energy Market Report - 09 September 2026
Escalating conflict in the Gulf drove European energy prices to multi-year highs on Tuesday, with strikes on Iranian-linked tankers, Iranian retaliation against US forces and reported attacks on Saudi oil facilities all feeding a rising risk premium. Gas, power, crude and carbon moved higher together, even though physical supply into the UK remains adequate and the system opened long this morning.
Natural Gas
Gas prices rose because the market is repricing supply security rather than responding to any shortfall in flows. UK NBP day-ahead settled 7.25p higher at 189.25 p/therm and Winter 26 added 6.36p to 189.40 p/therm, its highest level since early 2023, while Dutch TTF day-ahead was assessed at €76.43/MWh, up around 4.4 per cent. The near curve moved almost in parallel, with Oct-26 at 188.80 p/therm and Q4-26 at 191.08 p/therm. Norwegian Continental Shelf exports recovered around 4.5 per cent to 295 mcm/day and Gassco nominated 294.8 mcm/day this morning with no new maintenance, though unplanned restrictions at Troll, Kollsnes and Åsgard continue to hold roughly 30 mcm/day offline. UK LNG sendout is nominated flat at 8 mcm/day, with a run of largely US-origin cargoes arriving into north-west European terminals over the coming week. The market's real vulnerability is inventory rather than flow: EU storage stood at 66.9 per cent full on 6 September, some 12 percentage points below year-ago levels, and reports that Qatar has extended force majeure on cargoes into the autumn remove the most obvious source of replacement volume.
Electricity
Power followed gas higher but the prompt move had its own driver in a collapse in renewable output. UK day-ahead baseload settled at £154.45/MWh, up £26.83, as wind generation was forecast to fall by close to half towards 9.2 GW and German output to drop more than 10 per cent to around 14 GW. An unusually heavy nuclear outage programme, with roughly 2.7 GW unavailable across the Heysham, Torness and Hartlepool fleets, has pushed more of the evening ramp onto gas-fired plant at the worst possible moment for fuel costs. Day-ahead peak settled marginally below baseload at £152.84/MWh, reflecting strong daytime solar output that took system prices into negative territory around lunchtime before a sharp recovery above £190/MWh into the evening. Along the curve the moves were more contained, with Winter 26 up £6.20 to £152.91/MWh and Summer 27 up just £2.36 to £101.86/MWh, and margins on gas-fired generation are now very thin once fuel and carbon costs are accounted for.
Other Commodities
Crude led the wider complex, with Brent M+1 settling at $97.92/bbl on Tuesday and trading above $100/bbl this morning for the first time since 24 July as the Gulf conflict intensified and Iran reported capturing an uncrewed submarine in the Strait of Hormuz. Coal firmed in sympathy, with API2 ARA Cal-27 up $1.16 to $134.30/tonne. In carbon, EUA Dec-26 settled at €85.42 per tonne and UK ETS Dec-26 at £60.92 per tonne, leaving the UK allowance at a discount of a little over £12 per tonne on the day's exchange rate, essentially unchanged from the previous session. Global LNG benchmarks reflected the same tightening bias, with October JKM at $26.82/MMBtu against Henry Hub spot of $2.90/MMBtu, a spread wide enough to keep flexible US cargoes pointed towards Europe. Sterling was largely static at 1.1663 against the euro and 1.3537 against the dollar, so currency neither cushioned nor amplified import costs.